5 ms·
US Debt Clock Live
- slg 3mo agoI feel like the well has been poisoned regarding national debt talk. There is simply no point in having a conversation about the debt without discussing how revenue should be raised and/or expenses lowered. That means someone focusing purely on the debt being bad is likely doing it because they know their specific proposals for addressing it won't be popular.
- drcongo 3mo ago"popular" is why this mess has happened.
- slg 3mo agoShould we just do away with democracy?
- SirFatty 3mo agoyes, and we can't tax our way out of this situation.
- someguydave 3mo agoRaising taxes is really not part of the solution because increasing tax rate rates will likely not yield more tax collection. The real problem is immense spending on seniors to live a free life
- slg 3mo ago>increasing tax rate rates will likely not yield more tax collection What's so special about our current tax rates that you're making this claim? Because if you believe that higher tax rates don't yield more tax collected, why not argue for tax rates to approach 0%? So either you're couching your real and unpopular opinion like I described in my first comment or you're claiming that our tax rates are optimized for tax collected.
- M95D 3mo agoI'm not from US. How is federal gov. spending on seniors? AFAIK, there are no state pensions. Or am I wrong?
- someguydave 3mo agoUnfortunately you are wrong. While people don't "own" a pension, they do get government payments for life after they hit age 65 as long as they (very minimal) work to earn an income during their working years. (This is social security). They also get free healthcare for life at 65 and if they are unable to pay for full time round-the clock hospital care they get that free too (Medicaid). All-in the US governments spends $2,700 billion per year on seniors which is nearly triple the defense spending.
- functionmouse 3mo ago[flagged]
- largbae 3mo agoI like to believe that will help. Which party is proposing actions that will lower the debt?
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- selivanovp 3mo agoNone of them. You may only chose which slogan gonna be painted on the bombs to drop around the world.
- xnx 3mo agoMaximalist schizo version: https://www.usdebtclock.org/ https://www.usdebtclock.org/
- kemotep 3mo agoThe classic.
- kemotep 3mo agoIf I could wave a magic wand and get the policies I want, I would abolish essentially all taxes except a Land Value Tax. At an average of $10,000 per acre and a roughly 1.4 Billion acres of private property that we could “reasonably” collect on, that is $14 Trillion in Revenue per year. Split between the Federal, State, and Local governments proportionally, leaving around ~$8 trillion for the Feds. If we could keep the Federal budget under $7 trillion, then $1 trillion per year could service the debt. It would take nearly 40 years to pay it off at that rate. But if we save for 49, a Jubilee of Jubilee years, we could essentially wipe out all debt in this country. Real pie in the sky fantasy stuff to think people could follow an “eat your vegetables” tax and budget plan for 40+ years and also accept what is ostensibly a massive property tax hike, the least popular tax ever.
- M95D 3mo agoYou can't tax all land the same. Food will get very expensive.
- kemotep 3mo agoOf course which is why I said average. And farmers (and everyone else) would not be paying taxes on income, payroll taxes for field hands, gas taxes, import/export taxes, and so on so for many this could be a significant tax cut or a wash with what they already pay. And inefficient land uses would be taxed out and others who would more productively use the land could take over. But this is a pure fantasy scenario to start with because of the millions of people in the suburbs who already hate the concept of property taxes and whose land use directly would be impacted by such a tax.
- pupppet 3mo agoDoes anyone look at this debt and believe it will ever get paid off? It seems more realistic that everyone's waiting for some doomsday WW3 scenario where we just say ehh let's reset everyone back to zero.
- selivanovp 3mo agoI don't think people in Washington are waiting. They're pushing for WW3 full steam ahead.
- daft_pink 3mo agoI used to deeply care about this, but I find that generally the party not in power always complains about this and then immediately stops complaining once they are in power, so I have trouble taking it seriously. For Example: Republicans when Obama was in Office, Democrats when Trump is in Office, Republicans when Biden is in Office It’s been like 2 decades of both parties complaining and then doing nothing about it once they gained power.
- slg 3mo agoScroll down to the Debt By President section and switch over from chronological list to By % Increase. Of the last 11 completed presidential terms, 6 of the 7 biggest increases have been Republican and the 4 smallest increases have all been Democrats. "Both sides are the same" claims simply have no basis in reality when it comes to the national debt.
- daft_pink 3mo agoI didn’t really mean that both sides are the same. I meant that both sides drum up crisis rhetoric when they aren’t in power and ignore it when they are in power, but when they are in power they all increase anyways. Therefore voting for either party isn’t going to result in an actual decrease, because there is no serious party in the United States that is objectively trying to reduce the deficit.
- josefritzishere 3mo agoWe have a debt-base currency. Borrowing creates money but the opposite is also true: when someone repays a loan, money is actually destroyed. So it's not surprising that over 80% of total government debt is privately owned, mostly by the super rich. The top 1% benefit enormously from government debt. (but also pensions and insurance companies)
- CatalystPz 3mo agovery cool website, i love it reminds me of world monitor
- pickleglitch 3mo agoThe inclusion of DOGE's bogus "savings" data renders this whole thing suspect to me.
- cliglot 3mo ago[dead]